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“Sound asleep,” he muttered. “Guess that says a lot about my technique, doesn’t it?”
He got to his feet, and began to put her clothes back on her. Her pretty white blouse was stained with mud here and there, but he pulled it over her arms as she hung like a ragdoll in his. Then he buttoned it up with no small amount of regret. Her coat was going to be a real mess, once they got off it and picked it up off the wet ground. But before he could do that, he had to replace her panties, which were easy, and her jeans, which were not.
She stirred when he wrestled her into the jeans, opened her eyes and smiled crookedly at him. And it occurred to him for one, panicked moment that maybe she’d had more than three beers tonight after all. Maybe she’d been drinking before he’d ever arrived on the scene.
A rush of guilt swamped him, and he closed his eyes. Please, Fate, he thought, don’t let me have taken advantage of a woman too inebriated to consent. He was a lawyer before he’d ever been a politician. That was the way it was done in the Montgomery family. And he knew damned good and well what a rape charge would do to his political career.
“Caleb,” she muttered.
He looked at her, at the pure honest goodness of her. “I’m an idiot. You’re not the vindictive type, are you, Maya?” He asked the question as he put on his own clothes.
“Hmm?”
He cupped her chin. “Tell me you wanted this.”
She smiled. Then she hiccuped. Caleb closed his eyes tightly and felt a bit ill. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “How much have you had to drink tonight, Maya?”
She shrugged. “I don’t drink,” she said.
“Not ever?” He blinked in surprise.
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t look good…you know, to the church ladies.”
“Church ladies, huh?”
He wrapped his arms around her and helped her get to her feet. She leaned against him as he picked up her coat, but it was soaked almost clear through. So he put the denim shirt he’d been wearing around her shoulders, and walked her toward the passenger side of the truck.
“Caleb?”
He looked down at her. “What, hon?”
“Is sex always…so…so…you know? Good?”
Caleb stopped walking. “Well…no. Not always. At least, it hasn’t been for me. How about you?”
Her grin was shy and beautiful as she lowered her head. “I wouldn’t know,” she said very softly.
She might as well have picked him up over her head and tossed him into that river. “What do you mean, you wouldn’t know?” She reached for the door handle. “Maya? Are you telling me that this was…that you were a…a…?”
“Virgin.” She said it flatly.
“Oh, hell.”
She shrugged. “Tomorrow’s my birthday,” she said. And she smiled a smug little satisfied smile as if that was supposed to mean something quite profound. Then she stepped up into the pickup, only she missed the step and almost fell face first—would have, if he hadn’t caught her.
What the hell had he done here? He could see the headlines now.
Senatorial Candidate’s Night On The Town:
Montgomery Deflowers Virginal Good Girl After Getting Her Too Drunk To Say No!
“Oh, hell,” he said again. He helped her into the truck. Closed the door. Then he went around to the other side and got in himself. He started the engine, then sat there a minute resting his head on the steering wheel.
“Are you all right, Caleb?” she asked him.
He glanced sideways at her. Wide eyes just as blue as the sky on a clear summer day. That sprinkling of freckles. The look of pure relaxed contentment. She was not a political disaster waiting to happen. She was an angel who’d given him a night he would never forget. Smiling crookedly, he reached out, cupped her face with his hand, and said, “Probably you’d do well not to tell anyone about this.”
She smiled back at him. “I might be tempted to. I mean, just to prove that the current theory is wrong.”
